I was like 30 when I bought a new can opener, but it worked differently than any other one I’d used in 25+ years and for the life of me I could not figure it out. My brother, who was very mechanically inclined, came over, and he figured it out in 30 seconds and showed me. I learned. Imagine that. 

I just need to pat myself on the back for a minute. Yesterday I had to ride in the car for 4 hours with a coworker. He asked me if I’d caught up in Fox News and started telling me about this story about how Hillary Clinton and co. had conspired to undermine Trump and how it would be bigger than Watergate and whatnot.…

Thank you. I will reread this many times, carefully.

I can see that, for sure. Thanks for that insight.

I’m so glad you escaped.

It’s so awful. I wish we could cut through the cognitive dissonance.

Thank you for your insight. I have a feeling that him providing the childcare for three little ones adds to the trapped feeling.

Thank you for sharing this. I’m sorry that you have experience to speak from, and I hope your life is better now. I will take it to heart.

Thank you — great thoughts.

Except the kids. I gave up on our close relationship years ago, accepted that I can’t change her choice — but now it’s hurting my nieces and nephew.

Thank you. My one hope has been that since my sister earns the money, maybe she has some control over it (at least enough to leave one day).

Thank you for the reminder.

Good ideas, thank you. I am considering the CPS route. I’ll talk it through with my other sister who is a pediatrician. My niece is in preschool, so if I wait a few weeks it could look like someone there called it in.

You are exactly right. I will work on remaining calm no matter what idiotic things he says to bait me (and my sister supports him in saying) and matter-of-factly call him on his bullshit and/or walk away.

OMG. I would have imploded sitting there. It would be beyond belief that people brag about hurting their children, but I live in a rural area and hear it a lot too. They think it is their duty from God to hit their kids. They are why we fight to make all corporal punishment illegal.

Thanks!

Yeah, the spankings are a real worry for me too.

I stood up to my state house representative when he was saying inaccurate shit about wind turbines. I also spoke out about my school district’s superintendent who performed a drunken hit and run on camera but received no consequences (and the board president tried to shut me down, though I persisted Elizabeth Warren…

Sad question, but I know a lot of you are highly knowledgeable about abusers. I want ideas on how to deal with this — the best ways to decrease his harm, if that’s possible.

I’ll also add that the thesis you are presenting — 20 years old now — that while I have not had time to read it in its entirely, I already question both the scholarship and how it is written.